Ongoing contact with CQC

One of your local CQC Inspectors or Inspection Managers will be designated as your relationship holder. Your relationship holder is key in developing a consistent understanding of your organisation.

The main way for you and your relationship holder to maintain regular contact will be through relationship management meetings. These allow you to discuss important matters about your services. We will strengthen alignment with other national bodies such as NHS Improvement, to reduce any duplication in ongoing contact with providers.

Frequency of meetings

Face-to-face relationship management meetings will usually happen at least every three months. Your relationship holder may also stay in contact with you more regularly, for example through teleconferences.

Who should attend

Your relationship holder will usually meet with senior and/or executive members of the trust’s management team, together with any other member of staff the trust wishes to bring to discuss a particular issue. In some circumstances, senior staff from CQC will attend.

As part of the relationship management meeting, we may ask to meet staff or patient groups to establish a broader view of the trust’s culture and quality performance and help us decide on priorities for inspection.

What we discuss

Before a face-to-face relationship management meeting, your relationship holder will fill in a template to inform the discussion, based on the information we hold. This may include information such as details about changes in practice, serious incidents or complaints or concerns they have received about the trust’s services. We will share the template with you before the meeting and you will be able to comment on it or add to it.

If a trust has any significant concerns about quality, we expect you to raise them with the relationship holder, together with the action the trust is taking to address them. If the trust has commissioned any external reviews, you should also disclose these as a matter of course.

Other opportunities for contact

Your relationship holder will normally attend two of the trust’s board meetings in a year (to be confirmed). This enables them to observe how the board is run, and to meet its members.

CQC will also liaise regularly with other local and regional organisations and the public, and national partner organisations.

We welcome your feedback to help us improve our services. If you have any concerns, please contact your relationship holder and we will respond as quickly as we can.